An Italian experience: Photographs by Richard Lasner

by Claudia Rousseau

Nov. 19, 2003

In "Lungomare I: Siracusa," the viewer can almost
feel the rough surface of the stucco or the stones, smell the salt
air or hear the pigeons' flapping wings.

Italy is a sensuous
country. It is rich in ways that provoke the senses to unprecedented and
unrepeatable heights of experience. With a remarkable eye for composition,
artist photographer Richard Lasner has managed to capture not only a bit
of its visual beauty, but even some of its sensuality.

The photographs in "Italian Seductions," now on exhibit at the Creative
Partners Gallery, are extraordinary for many reasons, not the least of
which is their author's permeating sensibility. In speaking of them,
Lasner will relate a personal experience with each. This deep connection
with the subject in each image infuses the work with a character that
moves away from the often objective stance of the photographer into the
more subjective realm of painting.

I believe that Lasner would have liked to be a painter. The artist has
done the next best thing. Using the camera as a tool, his finished prints
are at least two steps away from the purely photographic act.

The process involves the transition from photograph to Iris print. An
Iris print is the highest form of a process widely known as giclee, a word
derived from the French verb meaning "to spray." Archival watercolor dyes
are sprayed through the Iris printer's ink jets in micro-droplets at the
rate of four million per second. As the drum holding the paper turns, the
color is being applied in layers, much like a watercolorist paints. The
resulting image has extraordinary resolution, with a very smooth tonal
range and an intense saturation unlike any other printing technique.

After processing traditional 35 mm film into positives, Lasner scans
them into the Iris printer. At this point, a master printer uses special
color tables to match the colors of the positive with the dyes that will
be used to create the prints on heavy textured paper. Lasner tries to use
the whole frame directly from the negative, but while examining the
proofs, he can make subjective changes to coloration or composition before
approving the final digital file. The finished prints, literally glowing
with the deep saturation and contrast the process provides, are large
scale, measuring an average 20 by 30 inches. The size, the textured
surface that picks up the watercolor dyes in very slightly varied relief,
and the original photographic image's depth of field combine to make a
visual experience that is complex but accessible to any viewer.

Lasner has created essays on various geographic areas of Italy in
successive short trips during the past eight years; most of the work in
this exhibit is from the past year. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of
the selection is the way the pictures communicate so strong a sense of
place without human presence. The absence of people in images of places so
full of the traces of culture over centuries is a visual seduction. One is
drawn into the place, alone, to wander through it vicariously. Some images
are so dense with the sensuous aspect of the Italian experience that
looking at them, you can almost feel the rough surface of the stucco or
the stones, smell the salt air or hear the pigeons' wings flapping as they
suddenly rise into the early morning light from an old Sicilian palazzo
fašade -- as in "Lungomare I: Siracusa." This is an especially successful
image, with its rich terra cotta color filling the whole field, accented
by green shutters. The sense of the time of day is very significant in all
these pictures, the changes in the weather and again, as in "Lungomare I,"
capturing that lucky moment with the light just breaking and the birds in
sudden flight.

Among other prints I especially liked were "Galleria: Trevi," with its
repeated groin vaults over an immaculate tiled floor, the insides of the
arches of the front of the arcade illuminated by brilliant light reflected
off windows of cars parked just beyond it (information provided by the
artist). The perspective is typical of the deep spaces Lasner manages to
photograph without losing the strong two-dimensional design value that
also characterizes his work. A similar effect is achieved in a view into
the empty courtyard of "Certosa San Lorenzo," a 12th century monastery in
Tuscany.

"Clock Tower: Loro Ciuffenna" not only conveys the view of a cold
morning in a hilltop town in the mountainous area of Pratomagno, but is
also visually fascinating for its nearly vertical perspective and palette
reminiscent of ancient Roman painting.

A high perspective view of three cliffs in heavy fog on the undeveloped
part of the Amalfi coast ("Scogliera: Costa Amalfitana") approaches the
appearance of watercolor with an almost Asian touch. This is a good
example of how the colors can be controlled in the making of Iris prints;
each cliff is a lighter, softer grey as the image moves back into space
and up the picture plane. Another would be "Cipressi: San Quirico,"
featuring a neat rectangular cypress grove in the middle of an ocean-like
field of green. Here the color was distinctly heightened and somewhat
altered to emphasize the strange, almost surreal character of the image.

Lasner also has successfully experimented with works printed in black
and white from an original color positive. In "La Finestra Rotonda: Spello
(Umbria)," the white stucco exterior of a 15th century house, with an
oculus window above a classic arched doorway, is seen in a strictly
controlled spatial relation to the tree that frames the composition's
right and upper edges. On that heavy textured paper, the surface of the
stucco is nearly tactile. Deep blacks contrast sharply against bright
whites, and delicate shadow effects in the foliage and in the upper right
corner create an exceptionally striking image.